I am a writer of lower budget, indie-minded, character-driven screenplays. Dynamic and well-rounded female characters often serve as my protagonists, though I try to construct strong characters and strong relationships in all of my stories.
I graduated cum laude with a B.A. in English (with a Secondary Education specialization) from Michigan State University in 2007. Go Green! I'm currently an English teacher and high school swim coach in Sacramento, California. When I'm not planning exciting lessons, grading essays, or training kids how to swim faster, I'm writing screenplays and watching movies.
My screenplay The Fall placed as a semifinalist (Top 2% or Top 75 of 4000 submissions) in the 2014 BlueCat Screenplay Competition. My sports-rom-com Bush League was a finalist in the 2nd Annual Stage 32 Happy Writers Comedy Contest (it was titled "Game of Strikes" at the time of entry). And my anti-rom-com Brokenhearted was reader endorsed on The Black List, a 2017 Page quarterfinalist, and the 2017 Austin Film Festival Drama Screenplay Winner.
Some of my favorite films include: American Beauty, Amores Perros, All Is Lost, Almost Famous, Arrival, The Big Short, Blindness, Brokeback Mountain, Castaway, Can't Hardly Wait, The Cider House Rules, Closer, Crazy Stupid Love, Crazy Rich Asians, The Cutting Edge, The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, The Departed, Dogma, The Dark Knight, Ex Machina, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Forrest Gump, Gattaca, Go, The Green Mile, The Goonies, Good Will Hunting, Inception, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Interstellar, Into the Wild, Igby Goes Down, Jerry Maguire, Liar Liar, Life as a House, Lion, Love Actually, Love and Basketball, Love Simon, Match Point, Moonlight, Me Without You, Pride and Prejudice, Run Lola Run, Reality Bites, Seven, all the Terminators (yes even 3, Salvation, AND Genisys!), The Departed, Rush, The Rules of Attraction, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, The Shawshank Redemption, Saving Private Ryan, Quills, A Single Man, The Social Network, Short Term 12, The Truman Show, Tigerland, Trainspotting, Three Kings, V for Vendetta, Warm Bodies, Unfaithful, Y Tu Mama Tambien, World War Z, X-Men 2 and Days of Future Past, and (500) Days of Summer. I'm sure I left something out.
